Blanche leans into his Trump ties
Todd Blanche is not trying to hide his past. In fact, he seems to treat it as part of the résumé. Last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Blanche was asked about claims that the Justice Department has been “weaponized,” and he pointed directly to his time defending Donald Trump.
“I represented President Trump in the Manhattan D.A. case and in Jack Smith’s prosecutions,” Blanche said. “So I lived it every single day for two years, what was happening.”
That candor has not done much to quiet critics, who argue that a former personal defense lawyer is an odd choice to help run the Justice Department, even if the department is technically not a personal law firm and this administration seems determined to test that proposition.
Rep. Don Beyer, a Virginia Democrat, fired back on social media after Trump said Blanche would move into the top job, at least for now. “The DOJ is not a personal law firm, yet Donald Trump has installed another one of his former personal defense lawyers to lead the DOJ,” Beyer wrote. “His blind allegiance to Trump is not a qualification for the job. He is wholly unfit to lead the DOJ.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
From prosecutor to Trump loyalist to top DOJ figure
Blanche’s path into the department was not built only on his work for Trump. Before that, he spent eight years as a federal prosecutor. During his year as deputy attorney general, though, he became one of the clearest public faces of the administration’s agenda.
That included helping place loyalist U.S. attorneys in districts across the country and backing the White House’s attacks on what it called “rogue, activist judges.” It also included defending now-dismissed indictments against Trump’s political enemies by drawing a straight line back to the criminal cases brought against Trump himself.
In November, Blanche rejected accusations that the department was engaged in political retaliation.
“When I read now that we’re weaponizing, I feel like I’m being gaslit, because we’re doing exactly the opposite,” Blanche said. “I take umbrage at the idea that the work that our prosecutors are doing is weaponization, because I have receipts. I know what happened the past couple years. I’ve lived it.”
Epstein files put Blanche in front
If Blanche has become especially visible anywhere, it is in the department’s handling of the Epstein files, a saga that followed a series of missteps by Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Blanche stood at the lectern at Justice Department headquarters when the administration released millions of Epstein documents in late January. He then went on television to defend how the release was handled and took to social media to hammer the administration’s critics.
The rollout brought fresh criticism. Victims and some members of Congress objected to redactions that accidentally exposed identifying information and to the temporary withholding of documents that contained unverified sexual assault allegations against Trump.
Blanche has tried to brush off the complaints as overblown. On “The Katie Miller Podcast,” hosted by the wife of Trump deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, he dismissed talk of missing files and cover-ups.
“There was drama about missing files, that we’re holding, covering things up,” Blanche said. “The evidence of the missing files came from the Epstein files. So, they’re not missing files, and we went back and adjusted that right away.” He added, “President Trump has said from Day 1, ‘I have nothing to hide.’”
Even so, Blanche has acknowledged the Epstein issue is not likely to vanish just because the department wants it to. Earlier this year, he said there is still a public appetite for more information.
“I think that there’s a hunger or a thirst for information that I do not think will be satisfied by the review of these documents,” Blanche said at a press conference. “And there’s nothing I can do about that.”
